13 September 2012

Andrew Hardacre and I arrived at Mai Po's boardwalk hide in bright sunshine to find the water just receding and a few waders circling about, looking for somewhere to land.

Neil Fifer was already there, and tipped us off that there was a Yellow Bittern (Ixobrychus sinensis)lurking in the thick grasses in front of the hide. It wasn't long before the bittern came briefly out into the open. With some down on the head, this was obviously a juvenile, which might have bred in Hong Kong.

Yellow Bittern (Ixobrychus sinensis)

Great Egrets (Casmerodius albus) were, as usual, much more obvious.

We waited to see what else would drop in. Here are shots of a variety of southbound migrant waders seen today.

Great Knot (Calidris tenuirostris)

Common Redshank (Tringa totanus)

Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica) - (Edited 18th Sept. - Siberian race "baueri" has been proposed as a "split" in 2010.... but the suggestion doesn't seem to have much traction.)

Black-tailed Godwit (Limosa limosa) - some moulting going on here !

Whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus)

Terek Sandpiper (Xenus cinereus) - rear left

Grey-rumped Tattler (Heteroscelus brevipes)

So we were not disappointed. But don't take my word for it - Andrew's blog post is here:-

5 September 2012

You never know who – or what – you are going to bump into at
Mai Po. From last Saturday, here are a family of Asian
Mongooses. (Or should that be “Mongeese”
?).

Meanwhile, on the tideline of Deep Bay, a daytime high tide today
brought the birds to about forty metres from the hides in the early afternoon.

Most unseasonal was a Saunders’s Gull. This is the earliest autumn record by several
weeks…. They wouldn’t normally show up until the end of October.

A reasonable variety of waders were to be seen, including
several with Hong Kong leg flags.

But if the birds aren’t gripping enough, then sorting out
the leg flags on view can certainly keep birders entertained on a late summer
afternoon.

One of the Greater Sandplovers on view today had an
interesting combination of pale Yellow-over-Blue leg flags. If the flag was originally white, now stained yellow,
with the blue flag below, it will be a bird flagged in Taiwan. A flag-sighting “First” for Hong
Kong. We just don't see Taiwanese waders here in Hong Kong.... they must usually migrate well east of us.

Three views of the same bird. I'll update this post if the flagging location is clarified.

The British Birdfair this year raised funds for projects
along the “East-Asian Australasian Flyway”.
To have been selected from the dozen-or-so “flyways” in the world is,
sadly, a sign that some of the birds here in East Asia are in deep trouble.

The “flyway” concept is a completely man-made one, but a
great way of conveying the interconnected nature of the birds’ stopover and
refuelling sites. And the presence in Hong Kong of birds from elsewhere in the flyway certainly reinforces the message, wherever they were originally flagged.